India

As I’ve said many times to my friend and Geography Department chair Eric, “Universities are medieval institutions”. If you were inventing a system of higher education today, what would it look like? I’d wager, it would not look like the current University/College system with it’s huge costs. Most are moving toward online classes and MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) and the pandemic certainly accelerated this trend. Which is all great from a human development point of view in my opinion. There are far fewer gates and gatekeepers to education. I’m a fan of Professor Scott Galloway and appreciate his thoughts and advice on the future of higher education. Basically he argues that “Colleges have become little more than luxury brands. Are academics deluding themselves by not addressing runaway college inflation?”. All of this is preamble because it’s one of my pet peeves. But lots of us are interested in history, and I like to punch holes in the conceit of Western thought that says we’re the center of everything, so I though this article was interesting. Oxford was founded in 1096, just after the “dark ages” and smack in medieval times. Though it was only “dark” in Europe and not so dark in other places of the world like India, Persia, and the Islamic world. “More than 500 years before Oxford University was founded, India’s Nalanda University was home to nine million books and attracted 10,000 students from around the world.” That’s right, it had a library of 9 million handwriten books. Though, most burned in a fire so I’m not sure I’d rely too heavily on that number. Still, must have been a lot of books.

Switzerland

This one comes from Bob. Some Swiss carto kids having fun.

Japan

Demographics in Japan have shown a long decline in birth rate. There’s another record low last year. It always strikes me that all the moaning and groaning about declining birth rates are sheer racism. All of it, in any developed Country, could be solved in a flash with immigration. Or, an even better choice is to get on with building a Donut Economy that’s not focused on endless growth (fuck the GDP as a metric). Or both. I know Andy in particular would love to have a Dunkin’ Donut Economy. But I’m sure he’d rather spell it like a Brit: “Doughnut”. There are some very legitimate points about the high cost of raising children, and the general high cost of living in Japan. But, I wonder if that high cost is evenly distributed. I would guess not but a quick search revealed no heat map to show this distribution. There’s probably a very steep drop in cost of living outside the major cities.

Hawaii, Australia, Alaska

The death of and legacy of Captain Cook. Interesting indigenous perspective on Cook’s legacy:

  • Starts about 5:45 in: https://www.nativeamericacalling.com/tuesday-february-14-2023-the-death-of-captain-cook/
  • Did you know Cook was Cooked? A Cook Luau? As a sign of respect he was treated like an Alii or chief. At around 14:49.
  • Lieutenant George Vancouver was with Cook in Hawaii and defended some of the young chiefs. He came back to Hawaii on a later expedition and entered into an agreement to join the British Empire. Queen Victoria recognized Hawaii as an independent kingdom.
  • Cook had a mandate to sign treaties but he did not in Australia, instead he said it was empty land and claimed it for England.
  • There’s a segment where they interview an indigenous Australian about Cook. British expansion in Australia was particularly brutal. On par with the US expansion West.
  • Cook arrived in Hawaii in a season of peace. But, he returned in a season of war. So circumstances had a big part in his death.
  • Cook’s legacy in Alaska:
    • He didn’t think Cook Inlet was the inside passage but others did so they entered to explore. Turnagain Arm is where they turned around.
    • There are some efforts to rename places named after Cook and educate people about the indigenous populations in Alaska long before Cook.
  • Captain Cook and Longitude: https://www.maas.museum/observations/2007/07/25/how-captain-cook-found-his-longitude/
    • Note that his mapmaking skills and precision brought the whalers to Hawaii.
  • Cook’s expedition brought venereal disease to Hawaii (and other places) and the knowledge of this caused some of the tension with chiefs who had a kapu on visiting the ships on his subsequent visit.
  • Some discussion of trying to get the British Museum to repatriate some items back to Alaska indigenous folk.

Human Diffusion

Interesting model of Least Cost Paths (LCP) for Neanderthal diffusion to the East.

Geography of Donuts

Ok, now you really get to go down the Geography rathole with me. Citing Professor Raworth’s Donut Economics book lead me to more donut economics and donut geography. The Dutch have the earliest recording of the modern donut (oliebollen). There’s a fascinating economic geography of donut franchises in the US and Worldwide.

Global Donut Market.